Will Durant

William James Durant was born on November 5, 1885, in North Adams, Massachusetts, a small mill town nestled in the Berkshire Hills of western New England. His parents, Joseph Durant and Mary Allard, were French-Canadian Catholics who had emigrated to the United States in search of better opportunities, carrying with them the faith, work ethic, and love of learning that they would pass on to their children. Young Will grew up in a household where books were treasured and education was regarded as the surest path to a meaningful life, values that would shape one of the most ambitious intellectual careers in American history.

Durant’s early education took place in Catholic schools in Massachusetts and New Jersey, where his family eventually settled. He attended St. Peter’s Preparatory School and then St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, New Jersey, graduating in 1907. Initially drawn to the priesthood, he entered a Jesuit seminary but soon found that his restless, questioning mind was ill-suited to the constraints of religious orthodoxy. He left the seminary and embarked on a period of intellectual exploration that led him to socialism, anarchism, and the progressive educational theories of Francisco Ferrer. From 1911 to 1913, he taught at the Ferrer Modern School in New York City, an experimental institution that encouraged free inquiry and rejected authoritarian methods of instruction. It was there that he met a young student named Chaya Kaufman, who would later take the name Ariel and become his wife, intellectual partner, and co-author of some of the most celebrated works of historical writing in the twentieth century.

Durant pursued his doctoral studies at Columbia University, earning his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1917 under the guidance of John Dewey, the great American pragmatist philosopher. His academic training equipped him with the philosophical framework and analytical tools that would distinguish his historical writing from that of mere chroniclers. Durant was not content simply to record events; he sought to understand the ideas, beliefs, and passions that drove human civilizations, and to distill from the vast panorama of history the lessons that might guide individuals and societies toward wisdom and fulfillment.

His breakthrough came in 1926 with the publication of The Story of Philosophy, a book that made the great thinkers of Western civilization accessible to ordinary readers. Written in clear, elegant prose that eschewed academic jargon in favor of vivid narrative and memorable characterization, the book was an immediate sensation, selling millions of copies and making Durant one of the most widely read authors in America. The Story of Philosophy demonstrated that serious intellectual content could reach a mass audience if presented with sufficient skill and passion, a principle that would guide Durant’s work for the next half century.

Emboldened by the success of The Story of Philosophy, Durant conceived of an even more ambitious project: a comprehensive history of human civilization from its earliest beginnings to the modern era. The result was The Story of Civilization, an eleven-volume masterwork published between 1935 and 1975 that remains the most successful historiographical series in the English language. The series began with Our Oriental Heritage in 1935, which surveyed the civilizations of Egypt, the Near East, India, China, and Japan, and continued through The Life of Greece, Caesar and Christ, The Age of Faith, The Renaissance, The Reformation, The Age of Reason Begins, The Age of Louis XIV, The Age of Voltaire, Rousseau and Revolution, and The Age of Napoleon.

The Story of Civilization was revolutionary in its scope and approach. Durant rejected the narrow specialization that characterized much academic history, insisting instead on presenting the whole life of a civilization in all its dimensions: its art and literature, its science and philosophy, its politics and economics, its religion and morality, its daily customs and social structures. He believed that history should be written for the common reader, not for a handful of specialists, and his prose style reflected this democratic conviction. His pages are filled with vivid character portraits, dramatic narratives, and philosophical reflections that transform dry historical facts into living, breathing stories of human aspiration and folly.

Ariel Durant’s contributions to the series grew over the decades, and beginning with the seventh volume, The Age of Reason Begins, published in 1961, she was formally recognized as co-author. The partnership between Will and Ariel was one of the great intellectual collaborations of the century, a union of complementary talents and shared passion that produced work of remarkable depth and beauty. Their tenth volume, Rousseau and Revolution, won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1968, a recognition of the extraordinary quality and significance of their life’s work.

In 1977, Will and Ariel Durant received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, from President Gerald Ford. The award recognized not only their monumental contributions to the understanding of human history but also their role in making the life of the mind accessible and attractive to millions of Americans who might otherwise never have engaged with the great ideas and achievements of civilization. Durant’s work embodied a distinctly American faith in the power of education and self-improvement, a belief that the treasures of human culture belong not to an elite few but to every person willing to open a book and engage with the past.

In their later years, the Durants distilled the wisdom of their decades of historical study into a slim but powerful volume, The Lessons of History, published in 1968. This book offered a series of concise reflections on the patterns and themes that recur throughout human history, from the biological roots of human behavior to the cycles of economic inequality, the role of religion in social cohesion, and the eternal tension between freedom and order. It remains one of the most widely read and frequently cited works of popular philosophy, a testament to Durant’s gift for making profound ideas accessible to all.

Will Durant died on November 7, 1981, in Los Angeles, California, just two days after his ninety-sixth birthday. Ariel had preceded him in death by just thirteen days, and the nearly simultaneous passing of the couple seemed a final testament to the depth of their bond. Together, they left behind a body of work that has educated and inspired millions, a monument to the conviction that the study of history is not a luxury but a necessity for anyone who wishes to understand the human condition and to live wisely in an uncertain world. In a nation that has always valued the self-educated individual and the democratization of knowledge, the Durants stand as towering figures, proof that the greatest stories are those told about all of humanity, and that the greatest teachers are those who never stop learning.